


Explosions start with a spark

by stillusesapencil



Series: Together we're an explosion [1]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alex lives, Explosions, F/M, Fire, Prequel, crap i need a title, kinda lost my steam on this otp, not the best but still good, so I thought I'd post this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 18:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10724670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillusesapencil/pseuds/stillusesapencil
Summary: Just as she reaches it, the rubble explodes, flying in all directions, white-hot.  And—oh shit—there’s a man.





	Explosions start with a spark

Jubilee stands alongside all the other students as Jean, the Professor, and Magneto rebuild the school. Piece by piece, brick by brick, they put the mansion, her home, back together. There’s a lot that was destroyed, true, but most of the house survived, and they will be able to live in it again. Thanks to Peter, all the people survived.

“You know, I could do this a lot faster myself,” Peter says, sitting on the ground.

“Not on that leg, you can’t,” she shoots back, and pops her gum between her teeth.

He smirks at her. She has a feeling it’s killing him to be stuck in a chair—how would she feel if she couldn’t use her powers?—but he’s handling it all with grace. 

She glances around. Scott is standing a little off to the side, head bowed. 

That’s right. She’d forgotten. Peter had been able to rescue everyone except for Scott’s brother, Alex Summers. No one had said much about him, not even Scott. The boy had been given no time to grieve before chasing after Stryker. She hadn’t heard the full story yet, but Jean would tell her in due time. 

Briefly, Jubilee considers going to Scott to offer a comforting word, but she doesn’t know what to say. She’s only sixteen, and has never lost someone of her own. She wouldn’t know what to say. She takes a couple steps his way, and that’s when she sees it.

There’s a pile of rubble, untouched by the rebuilders as of yet, and it’s glowing. That doesn’t seem right.

Shooting a glance over her shoulder, she sprints to the mess. It’s spectacularly stupid—what if it blows up? What if it’s a trap? But if it’s either, she’d rather it be her than anyone else to take the hit. 

Just as she reaches it, the rubble explodes, flying in all directions, white-hot. And—oh shit—there’s a man. He’s naked, his hair is singed off, and his body is covered in bruises and burns. Red energy pours off him in waves, expanding around them. She can feel herself absorbing some of it, but there’s so much and it’s hot and if anyone else comes over here, they’re going to get hurt. 

Panic presses against her throat. 

Someone calls her name. “Jubilee? Jubilee, are you alright? Jubilee!” 

Someone is coming. They’re going to burn.

The Professor told her that she absorbed energy all the time without knowing it. Why couldn’t she do it on purpose now?

Jubilee gathers herself, and starts trying to pull the energy into herself. Spreading her arms, she focuses on the cosmic waves surging off him, trying to reel it in. Slowly, very slowly, she starts gathering it. The red light starts to siphon out of the air and flow into her. It’s hot, so hot, and once she has it, it fights to get back out. 

“Jubilee!”

Not now, not yet! She pulls harder, dragging every last bit into herself. 

It’s out of the air, but not gone. It pushes against her, pulsing through her. Power like she’s never had, and she can’t control it. 

She whirls to see Mystique running toward her. Jubilee can’t control the heat inside her. 

The Professor sees what’s going on and starts toward them. He’s coming fast, but not fast enough to stop Mystique. 

The energy inside her pulses, threatening to lash out. 

She can’t control it; she can’t stop it. She faces the trees and extends her hands. Taking a breath, she releases, and oh, blessed relief. 

Red sparks burst from her hands into the trees. A large tree catches fire, but she can’t worry about that now. The energy is out of her, it’s gone, she won’t hurt anybody now. 

The man. She’d forgotten about him for a moment.

She drops to her knees beside him, grasping his wrist for a pulse. His body is hot enough to scorch her, but she finds his pulse. He’s alive.

His face looks like it’s been burned off. Blood drips in a steady stream from his nose. What little hair he has left is burned black. And he is very, very naked. If this were the movies, he would have been left with some pants, at least. But it’s not the movies, and Jubilee is very distracted.

Then his eyes burst open, and she nearly screams.

His eyes are yellow, glowing. He still has too much energy inside of him. 

Mystique arrives first. “Alex!”

“Alex?” Alex Summers, Scott’s brother. Not dead after all.

Mystique curses at the sight of him. 

“What do we do?” 

Mystique shakes her head. “I don’t know. Charles!”

The Professor is there. “Alex,” he says quietly, but he sounds worried. 

The rebuilding has stopped. 

“Raven,” the Professor says, “I need you to keep them away. He’s dangerous.”

Mystique nods and gets up to herd everyone away.

Until this moment, Alex has been still, mostly moving his head back and forth. Now he starts to thrash and groan, hands and chest glowing.

“Did you absorb his energy?” asks the Professor.

Jubilee nods. 

“I need you to do it again. Send it into the trees, and don’t worry about the fire.”

She searches his face.

He gives her a nod.

She inhales, shuts her eyes, and puts her hands on his chest. 

It burns.

It burns, but she does her job. She pulls the energy into herself until her vision goes red, then expels it into the trees. Each time a different tree catches fire, but she refuses to worry. The energy starts to ebb from him, and he stops writhing.

“That’s enough,” the Professor says, and she sends the last sparks into the trees. “He needs medical attention. Kurt!”

There’s a pop, and the blue boy is there. 

“I need you to take him into the healing room. Can you do that?”

Kurt nods, and grabs Alex’s shoulders. With another pop, he’s gone.

The Professor removes his hand from his temple. “I just told Hank to go be a doctor. Now, let’s see about this fire.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No! Don’t be sorry. You did your job, and most likely saved his life.”

“I did?” 

“You did. It’s important that you get some rest now.”

She hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it, but she is exhausted. 

The professor puts out the fire with his mind somehow—maybe compresses the air so it runs out of oxygen?—she’ll ask Jean later.

The mansion is almost complete. Jean and Magneto are finishing, and when they do, Jubilee finds a comfortable couch and goes to sleep.

~

She doesn’t hear about Alex for a while. Summer term begins. 

A girl named Storm joins the school, saying she wants to be “on this side.” Peter stays at the school, and so does Magneto for a while, but he eventually leaves. Rumors say he and the Professor had a fight. Jubilee never put much stock in rumors.

Jean tells Jubilee about Apocalypse and fighting in her mind and how Strom was with Apocalypse and Scott and Scott and Scott. Jubilee listens, and what she hears is mostly how much Jean really likes Scott. She doesn’t say anything, though. Jean will tell her about that when she’s ready. 

The four of them—Jubilee, Jean, Scott, and Kurt, become good friends. It helps that they’re training under Mystique as X-men. This is the second group of X-men, she learns. The first was a group that fought on a beach in Cuba in 1968. Mystique was one of them. So was Alex.

Alex, she hears, is alive, but a vegetable in the med bay. Scott goes to visit him a lot for a while, but when nothing happens, his visits are less frequent. Hank is treating him, but it sounds like Mystique is also doctoring. 

On Christmas day, she goes down to see Alex. Scott has gone home, and Jubilee feels even a vegetable should not be alone on Christmas day. 

She sits in a chair beside him, watching the machines measure his life. _Beep. Beep. Beep._

He looks better than when she last saw him. He is clean, his wounds are healed, and his hair has grown back, blond, she notices. His eyes are closed, but she assumes they are no longer yellow.

Tentatively, she reaches out a hand to brush a strand of hair off his eyes.

“He’s alive because of you.”

She gasps and whips her head to see the Professor in the doorway. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be down here.”

“No, no, you’re quite alright. You need to see the man you saved.”

She turns back to Alex’s sleeping form. “Do you think he’ll ever wake up?”

The Professor studies Alex. “I hope so. And if he does, I’ll tell him about you.”

She shakes her head. “With all due respect, I’d rather tell him myself. If he wakes up.”

“Of course.” 

They sit a few moments more, and then Jubilee goes. _Maybe he’ll wake up, maybe he won’t. Either way, I think I want to know more about him. I’d like to be his friend._

Nearly a year after she first meets him—if discovering him near-death can be called meeting—she gets a chance to do exactly that—be his friend. And maybe, _maybe,_ a little bit more.


End file.
